


Made Fortune

by bluerosele



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Backstory, Bullying, Character Study, Charles Darwin is important, Child Abuse, Childhood, Gen, I'm Sorry, Protect Newton Geiszler at all Costs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-26
Updated: 2015-05-26
Packaged: 2018-04-01 08:29:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4012753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluerosele/pseuds/bluerosele
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Newt makes his fortune.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Made Fortune

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shmegel](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Shmegel).



Newt is ten when he learns about Darwin. 

He was small, and the playground was open with crevices hiding large twelve year olds who mark their territory with fists. Newt’s always had a problem with boundaries and apparently the entire back half of the wooden area with the most insects was property to said large twelve year olds. 

They beat him up a bit, shattering a the side of his glasses with the eye they were aiming for. He tells his parents he dropped them. They nod and get him a new one, seeming to not notice the purple under his eyes. 

The insects are worth more attempts at sneaking past the barricade of blocky ten year olds, because they’re like super cool. He finds a bizarre spider with actual fur, before he’s yanked backwards and thrown against the nearest tree in the underbrush. This time they have the decency to keep his bruises under his shirt, but the tallest of the twelve year olds smiles and grabs hold of his neck before saying, “fortune favors the brave, dude”. 

Considering the whole situation was rather unfortunate in Newt’s opinion, the words stick with him.

From then on the territory expands to wherever Newt is, and each time is a consistent pattern, ending always with the “fortune favors the brave, dude”. It seems like a stupid thing to say, it doesn’t make any sense, but the ten year old is older and his parents always remind him despite what he may think he’s not smarter than those older. 

But, like most things, the words stick in Newt’s brain, because if he can’t figure it out then something must be wrong with it. He goes to the one person he trusts with this. 

* * *

 

Ms. Anne lets him talk. So he asks the questions, the ones he needs more data on, the ones where “the kids say I’m an actual Newt because of my name, am I going to sprout a tail?” and “why do caterpillars become butterflies if they’re just gonna die like a day later, that seems anticlimactic right?”. Ms. Anne answers when she can, which is always, and never tells him “not to think about those things, son, go outside and play”. 

This time though Ms. Anne does her eyebrow squinty thing when he asks her what the words mean after fourth period science, and says, “You might want to take that up with Mr. Andrews. I don’t do words, that’s the English departments job.” 

Newt shakes his head so hard his glasses slide off his nose (getting a bigger size would be more economical so he can grow into them, his parents told him).   

Ms. Anne notices this, because she’s a genius and notices everything, and leans back in her chair, which means the topic is getting serious and Newt prepares for a science mode. “Not a fan of him are you?”

“More he’s not a fan of me—not my fault, he kept going on about how Frankenstein was something about Freud and no okay no it’s about neurochemistry and awareness leveling sentience and he was acting like people who are afraid of science which is just shit and—” Newt stops and winces, waiting for what usually follows words like that but Ms. Anne laughs hard and that’s almost scarier. 

“I knew you were my favorite for a reason,” she says. Newt’s about to remind her how that’s probably against teaching protocol when she jumps up. “It’s recess now though don’t you want to do some field work?” 

Newt shrugs, “Nah, when I’m late usually they get distracted and don’t find me.” 

Ms. Anne sharp eyes soften to something he’s never seen before. He wants to ask if she’s okay, she looks sad and somehow still as in the know as always. Before she says the words that never helps Newt about recess, she reaches around for the chalk and begin frantically drawing on the board squiggles and words and everything else Newt needs. “So, the way it seems you’re describing fortune, in my general opinion, is like that of chances for success. Because well, yeah, that’s what fortune means. But using it comparably, to say fortune favors, implies likelihood of said success rate being altered by ranging factors. Brave in context can mean a lot of things, there’s not really a clear translation scientifically speaking other than maybe bravery in survival. An organism that is secure in its standing on the evolutionary scale—we’ve talked about that in class remember? Right, so taking those factors—” Ms. Anne continues on for all of Newt’s recess period, speaking with her hands, and words he wants to know more of, leaving with seventeen books stacked taller than he is by some guy named Charles Darwin.

* * *

   

This Darwin guys a rockstar. 

His ideas branch off in a tree of _I THINK_ that Newt hopes Darwin was finally able to believe he was so right. This is his tree of life now, the one his mother always told him about seemed out of reach anyway. These apples were easier to eat. 

The tree shows limbs outgrowing one another and planting through new ones, as the old ones, the ones that couldn’t grow fall and die. Newt worries he’s one of the broken branches, Darwin describes and when he brings this worry up with Ms. Anne she swivels around in her chair and gives him _the look_ of disappointment that’s usually directed at anyone else in the class but him. 

He’s about to apologize, but then she says, “You’re smart. You know what Darwin means.” Ms. Anne holds out her thumb. “Yeah, we have these.” She points to her head. “But, more importantly, we have these. Make your own fortune.” 

And Newt _gets it_. 

* * *

 

He reads the rest, because once again, Darwin is the Rockstar of Rockstars. In the Newt-sized corner behind the school’s outside parking lot, he barricades the books and claims his own territory, where he can read them, knowing there’s more fieldwork to be done in better and far off places Darwin’s showing him.

The twelve year olds get bored easily, though. They find him under the stack and rip him out toppling over his tower and just as the largest of them has his fist raised Newt says calmly, smiling, “Fortune favors the brave, dude.”  

The twelve year old pauses for about three seconds before he hits and hits and hits harder than he ever had before. But, it hadn’t been about that. Newt knew he couldn’t retaliate with his hands, but he could with those words, throwing them back at the ones who thought they knew what they meant and with the knowledge that he is climbing the tree. 

He’ll make his own fortune, he’ll make fortune for Ms. Anne, and he’ll make fortune for other small ten year olds who don’t know why the big ones are made to seem so much bigger. 

In the end he makes fortune for a species almost off the tree they created, but though he loves the ones that are smashing them to a stump, he promised Ms. Anne, and Hermann needed some more Darwin in his numbers. 

 


End file.
